1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information management apparatus and information management methods for providing information on a device for management the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with spread of Internet, also as for printers, a form of use in a network has been generalized. Usually, as for high-price machines such as high-speed machines and color machines, although there is a tendency that a network interface is incorporated in a machine, in case of low-price monochrome machines, a form is general in which a network interface is not packed with a main body but provided separately as a network card module (or a network board).
In this case, the printer main body and the network card module are intelligent machines each having a CPU, and the respective machines perform communications through connection interfaces and mount desired services.
By this, a heavy load network service can be performed by the network card module, and further, by the absence of load of the network service, the CPU of the printer main body and the peripheral performance can be lowered. Thus, a reduction of cost of the printer main body can be intended.
However, in a conventional network interface, although only transmission of print data from a host computer represented by, for example, lpr, to the printer may be performed, nowadays, needs of performing information management of the printer from the host computer have increased. For this purpose, various means as additional techniques are provided.
The simplest example is a form in which information management data (job control language) is also transmitted by a port for transmitting print data. In the job control language, because of commonly having the port for sending the print data, there is no need of separately increasing a service port and the mount is relatively easy.
However, if a large amount of print data is transferred by the port, since the port is occupied by the transfer of the print data, there is a problem that exchange of information management data stops. Besides, in a protocol of a one-way type connection such as an lpr protocol, to begin with, although it can control the printer from the host computer, there is a defect that it can not acquire information.
As the next technique, there is a system using SNMP/MIB. This is a method in which, using an exclusive port for data transmission/reception, using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) as a normal standard, information management of the printer is performed from the host computer.
However, in this system, it is required to originally develop an exclusive client program for acquiring MIB information using SNMP and providing UI (User Interface) for information management of the printer. In addition, in this system, since, to begin with, SNMP is a protocol for performing exchange of simple information, in MIB, only a simple database such as numerals, letter strings, or the like.
As a result, information necessary for constituting UI for information management, such as a bit map image visually showing a construction of equipment, must be owned by a client program. Attendant upon this, there is a problem point that the client program must be in machine kind correspondence by each machine kind of the printer.